ghiom

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  • ghiom  Sorry, I am not from the USA, perhaps it means I don't have the background to understand completely, but from what you say I understand that creating a network of relationships spares you the pain of seeking your own sources of information (news or knowledge, i think the distinction is irrelevant). This tends to promote a passive way of getting informed, and is therefore very dangerous : what I get from my network is not necessarily traceable, nor true (factually... as far as this word as any meaning). In that way of behaving towards information, I delegate the checking for relevance to others, who delegate it to others, who... This means I am even more vulnerable to gossips, hoaxes, or simply mistakes or misunderstood pieces of information. It is the dream of advertisers and public relation people. Saying if info is important it'll find me is just like saying when i'm really hungry somebody will appear and give me a sandwich. It can be true if you have some good friends "watching your back", but if it does not happen in time it is deadly, and it is not reliable. I take it just as a mistake in the sense of the implication. Passing to your network information that you think is important does not mean that you will receive the important information when you need it (the importance being relative to each node of the network). Believing so is just letting your network decide on what sould be important to you. This makes you vulnerable to manipulation.
  • • 3 months ago
    •   “If the news is important, it will find me”
    •   Mathew's comments
  •   n8k99  perhaps the difficulty here is the confusion of the two terms 'knowledge' and 'news.' News is a small group of facts, some of which may have a dubious quality to them, and geared towards relating a particular situation and/or analysis of the event. Knowledge has more of a perspective of the event which can and usually does, have a greater perspective of the events, theory or accumulated group of facts as they fit into the landscape of the total wholeness. Networking via people you trust, or will come to trust, is more active than the process of depending upon the process of depending upon the network of televisions and newspaper accounts. For as a participant in a network, the news you receive will only be as reliable as the news you transmit. This becomes a swap meet of information. You have ideas and observations which are not possible by another human being, strictly because you are you and no one else. You transmit these things and receive observations which others have as well. Important news, such as major catastrophes, governmental declarations, and other such things were quickly passed through the word of mouth channels even before the advent of the internet. However with the development of social networks on the internet, this information travels in real time to a wide variety of people, who then pass it on to other people and therefore the news becomes filtered into its importance. Importance is not something that has to be known right away. The knowledge of the events on 9/11/2001 is more important than the instantaneous absorption of the event itself. If someone did not know about it for a week or two, their life would not be significantly downgraded, if at all. and perhaps it would have even enhanced their life to not watch it over and over again on the passive networks(television)
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